‘WHERE WE WOULD EXTEND THE MORAL POWER OF OUR CIVILIZATION’: AMERICAN CULTURAL AND POLITICAL FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA, 1843-1856 A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mathew T. Brundage December 2015 © Copyright All rights reserved Except for previously published materials Dissertation written by Mathew T. Brundage B.A., Capital University, 2005 M.A., Kent State University, 2007 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2015 Approved by ________________________________ Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Mary Ann Heiss, Ph.D. ________________________________ Kevin Adams, Ph.D. ________________________________ Gang Zhao, Ph.D. ________________________________ James Tyner, Ph.D. Accepted by ________________________________ Chair, Department of History Kenneth Bindas, Ph.D. ________________________________ Dean, College of Arts and Sciences James L. Blank, Ph.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………….. iii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………... iv PREFACE ………………………………………………………………... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………….. vii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTERS I. Chapter 1: China as Mystery ……………………………… 30 II. Chapter 2: China as Opportunity ..………………………… 84 III. Chapter 3: China as a Flawed Empire………………………146 IV. Chapter 4: China as a Threat ………………………………. 217 V. Chapter 5: Redefining “Success” in the Sino-American Relationship ……………………………………………….. 274 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….. 317 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………… 323 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….. 326 iii List of Figures Figure 1 – “Chinese City”………………………………………………….. 44 Figure 2 – “Amoy – One of the five ports opened by the late treaties to foreign commerce”…………………………………………. 44 Figure 3 – “The Emperor of China”……………………………………...... 50 Figure 4 – “Mandarin receiving seals of office from the Emperor”……….. 50 Figure 5 – “Itinerant Fruit Seller”………………………………………….. 52 Figure 6 – “Chinese Barber”……………………………………………….. 52 Figure 7 – “Chinese Ploughing. Macao”………………………………….... 52 Figure 8 – “Untitled” image of a Tanka woman …………………………… 53 Figure 9 – “The Chinese Family”…………………………………………… 55 Figure 10 – “Sampan Girl” …………………………………………………. 56 Figure 11 – “Head of a Chinese girl” ………………………………………. 56 Figure 12 – Barnum Broadside……………………………………………… 58 Figure 13 – “Dog Seller” …………………………………………………… 67 Figure 14 – “Stages of Society” ……………………………………………. 71 Figure 15 – “The Cobbler and his Movable Workshop” …………………… 95 Figure 16 – “Irrigating”……………………………………………………… 95 Figure 17 – “The Annual Spring Festival” …………………………………. 97 Figure 18 – “Dr. Lin’s Celestial Balm”……………………………………… 107 Figure 19 – “Chinese School”……………………………………………….. 122 Figure 20 – “Domestic Scene – Ladies at their usual Employments”……….. 140 Figure 21 – “Chinese Lady”…………………………………………………. 140 Figure 22 – “Infantry Soldier”……………………………………………….. 173 Figure 23 – “Military Officer”………………………………………………. 173 Figure 24 – “Chinese Soldier”………………………………………………. 173 Figure 25 – “Foot of an Ancient Chinese Lady/Foot of a Modern Chinese Lady” 184 Figure 26 – “Appearance of the bones of a foot when compressed”………... 185 iv Figure 27 – “Cramped Foot and Shoe”……………………………………… 185 Figure 28 – “Chinese Tomb”………………………………………………… 206 Figure 29 – “Chinese Fortune-Teller”……………………………………….. 209 Figure 30 – “Tricks played with the queue”………………………………… 259 Figure 31 – “Mode of exposure in the Cangue”…………………………….. 259 Figure 32 – “Tract Distribution among the Chinese”……………………….. 290 Figure 33 – “Leang Afa, the Chinese Evangelist”…………………………... 298 v PREFACE: A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century did not employ any official or standardized methodology for transliterating Chinese characters into English, causing much consternation for historians ever since. As such, Chinese names, places, and words were written in a variety of combinations that roughly phonetically sounded similar to the pronunciation of the character, but without regard to regional and dialectical differences. For instance, Peiping, Peking, Pekin, and Beipin were all given as spellings for the capital of China within the source materials. For the sake of clarity and employing what has become somewhat standard convention, I have used Pinyin romanisation in reference to any specific names, places, or ideas throughout the dissertation. In instances where text is quoted, the original spelling will be maintained with the current Pinyin transliteration following in brackets. Nevertheless, places and names with commonly accepted or understood spellings that do not conform to modern Mandarin romanisation conventions, like Hong Kong [Xianggang] or Canton [Guangdong], will be used to maintain consistency with the original sources. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The route to this dissertation has been circuitous to say the least. A passing chance to take a course in Chinese history as an undergraduate, combined with my existing interest in the history of the British Empire, led me to what I found to be a fascinating period of time in the shared history of both of these nations: The Opium Wars. Understanding British reactions to their role in these conflicts became the cornerstone of my master’s thesis. While deciding to return to academia to complete a PhD, I realized that even less had been written about Americans living in China during the same chronological period. Having lived in China during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, what struck me was that the public representations of China and the Chinese people in American media sources – that China was a vast country, with a huge population, and that American’s really did not (or even could not) understand their history and culture – could have been written over a century and a half prior and not been out of place within the dominant narrative. And so after a few tentative research steps in various writing seminars, my research agenda took shape and I delved as deeply as possible into the archives. Archivists at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library and the Divinity School Library at Yale University proved to be invaluable in helping to identify and retrieve boxes of letters and a seemingly countless number of microfilm reels. Special thanks to Martha Smalley, curator of Special Collections at the Divinity Library, for helping me to navigate the labyrinthine and overlapping collections of Yale’s various, extensive archives. In addition, many thanks to the often unnamed champions of modern historical research – the librarians and archivists who have and continue to digitize materials. Without their work, locating many of my primary sources would have been infinitely more difficult. vii The number of debts I owe to friends, colleagues, faculty, and family for their professional and moral support cannot be done justice in a few lines. Matthew Phillips, Sarah O’Keefe Zabic, Bryan Kvet, Jeffrey O’Leary, Emily Wicks, Erika Briesacher, and Denise Jenison at one time or another read, edited, and/or acted as a sounding board for whatever ideas were bouncing around my head. They also tolerated and sometimes incited endless recitations of Eddie Izzard’s famous rejoinder: “Do you have a flag?” Many thanks to Gang Zhao, James Tyner, and Kevin Adams for serving on my dissertation committee, and especially for Dr. Adam’s near encyclopedic historiographic knowledge – serving as a consistent reminder to keep my work connected to the work of others. The greatest thanks in terms of the finished product goes to Ann Heiss, the director of my dissertation project. Her insightful and at times brutally direct editing helped to guide me over these many years. Of course, any and all errors or omissions are my own. Thanks to my sisters Crista and Martha and their families, my grandparents Thomas and Mary, to my other grandparents Robert and Patricia (both recently passed). They have been steadfast supporters of my interest in history in every way possible. Many thanks to my parents Tom and Joan, who helped their nerdy son figure out what he wanted to do in the world and always encouraged me to look for the answers wherever in the world they may be. And, of course, to my husband Bryan – who had the bad luck of meeting a graduate student right before comprehensive exams and has stuck with me for some reason ever since. He has helped keep me grounded and focused during the entire dissertation writing process – from bouts of writers block to late night brainstorming. My gratitude for his support knows no bounds. viii Introduction “I considered that China is a country as distant as any other; that it is as diverse from ours as any; that the people are as much our antipodes in dress, customs, religion, &c., as in their geographical position.” – Benjamin Ball, M.D.1 If one can categorize the narratives that resulted from U.S. interaction with China in the mid-nineteenth century, the account of Dr. Benjamin Ball of Boston, Massachusetts is, if anything, fairly unsurprising. Ball’s stated goal was a mix of personal adventure and professional proselytization, an attempt to explore the unknown while expounding the value of American medical practices to the Chinese. The period between the First and Second Opium Wars (1843-1856) saw a flowering of American discourse on the topics of China and the Chinese as a result of increased access, increased trade, and increased opportunities for publication, and Ball’s Rambles in Eastern Asia fits neatly within